That video roll inside the system... nice!! Having ZFS is a big win, IMHO. It only lacks HA, an important feature to make this system a TrueNAS competitor. If they can make the entire disk array available to each node at a time they could make this a highly available solution. On a side note. I always wondered which filesystem high end storage solutions use. Like EMC VMAX, or Hitachi VSP 5000, and so. They most likely use a propietary solution, but I wonder if they are based on ZFS.
Having this unit as not be Active/Active HA capable for all drives, is a really big shortcoming from QNAP. You should be able to choose if they operate as HA nodes, or separate nodes, for storage. Not just two separate nodes, as 8x disk bays limits your zpool configuration options. I wouldn't buy this myself though, as FreeNAS on second hand kit is far cheaper and more flexible.
Yes. This was done on the EOS R and the probe. That was the idea. The probe actually looks a bit better when paired with the C70's but we shot this B-roll before the C70's arrived. Stay tuned for more on that.
You make vendor lock-in sound so great when you talk about a "QNAP ecosystem" ;-) The form factor seems nice for a small/medium size office but the dual NAS and 6 core Xeons seems like a little more than one needs and expandability you'll never take advantage. Although it does seems like something one would put in a remote office away from easy technical support.
So QNAP does not actually vendor lock devices. You can use many non-QNAP branded devices as well. What they do have is some specific hardware solutions for their NAS units that solve specific needs. They also have sales folks and partners that are trying to sell more from a broader portfolio which is a fairly basic business strategy. Maybe I should have been clearer on that but the video was getting long as it is.
Anyone remember the Dell Poweredge C6100? I almost bought one of those, but decided on the 2100 instead(single NAS instead of 4), The 6100 wasnt strictly a NAS, it was more of a compute node, but with very high density(for the time) drive bays. Even today, 12xLFF or 24xSFF drive bays on a 2u system is pretty good. If i could finde one of them for $150 with everything needed but drives, processors, and RAM i'd probably pick one up, as 48 cores would still be cool to mess with, but the idle power draw would be insaile, my 2100 with only two Xeon L5640 idles at 250w with drives active. I cant imagine how much power a 4 node, 8 processor X5650 C6100 would draw, my guess is that it would need two 1100w PSUs
Swing and a miss in my book, without a shared drive pool there is no real redundancy except for the psu's. It's basically two stand alone nas'es put into a metal box. It's a lot of complicated hot plug fancyness without any real benefit over just having two separate nas boxes - apart from the redundant power supplys.
Running GlusterFS on this unit for HA and/or just high performance (stripped over both nodes, or in Gluster lingo, a distributed stripped volume) would just ABSOLUTELY kick ass!!! The almost $7000 US (at the time of writing) would be the biggest limitation though. But I will say this -- the QNAP management software makes a lot of the sysadmin tasks SUPER duper easy and it's so well integrated with the hardware that they've chosen. My two wishlists: 1) PCIe 3.0/4.0 x16 slots. Not many of their systems have that capability. 2) Support for 100 GbE (or 100 Gbps Infiniband). This would also be a HUGE benefit for my own personal use case as well. The lack of support for this type of hardware is the other biggest limiting factor that prevents me from deploying a system like this, unfortunately. :(
The enterprise offering is the ES1686dc which looks like that but shares the storage among both controllers and is fully redundant. I've been using their enterprise hardware for over 10 years and they are to me the most bang for the buck.
Exactly right on the Laowa. Using the EOS R. Newer shots with it use the C70 as well which is a bit better. When we did the B-roll the C70's had not shipped.
Reminds me of the Supermicro Fat Twin from a few years ago (they might still have it). Was two nodes in 3U with an internal backplane for fast networking between the two nodes. NexGen used it as a NAS head that did active-active replication between the two halves.
God if that had dual active connection to the whole black plane it would be killer. It would need two internal InfiniBand links or some such for concurrency, but wowzers that would be nice.
Have looked at that model the other day since I manage several QNAP units both in production and at home, and was curious about their product range nowadays. The hardware looks nice and the price is OKish. But it lacks HA, so in practice is little more than two QNAP NAS units in a smaller space. Unfortunately, being QNAP, I suspect will also mean a steady diet of bloated, buggy, awfully designed features and apps, so I would give them the pass on HA solutions. TrueNAS HA has a much better feel good ratio, in my opinion.
This is all cute and all. But where are the 3/4U chassis for building commodity truenas / w/e units. I'm tired of tossing units that blow some part and are past EOL on official and aftermarket support. Or hoarding a basement full of Dell/HPE/IBM units for parts to keep one unit going in confidence.
I'm a bit concerned that STH is going the way of toms hardware, where the reviews are more about what something 'is' instead of giving us the skinny and performance details. This video has almost no real content in it.
Looks really nice. But for homeuse I think the price is a bit high ;-) I have always build my own NAS solutions, as the home NAS units always let me down somehow. Mostly the lack of control I guess. Now I run debian with ZFS, all managed from the console. And yes I like working on the command line and nothing happens behind the scenes without me knowing about it.
I really wish they released it in desktop factor as well... of course by making it quieter a lot ;) Though in a desktop range, it'd be better if they released it with E2246G for the iGPU added functionalities. Not to mention they really need to like into adding clustering functionality besides ZFS. And hopefully they could reduce the pricing of the whole hero range to more palatable regions...
Personally, I do not like the Qnap software. That said this does not seem practical to me. I would rather have something like the Synology active-active dual controller system. Then segregate the services by container or virtual dsm. Though ZFS is cool, I just do not see use this solution. Even for a backup target, you want both copies in different locations so you need 2 units.
Sorry for offtopic. Can anyone recommend a fanless server build? Maybe something based on ARM or low power ryzen? I found Akasa Galileo TU1 which would be a candidate but i'm looking for something in 2-3U area and standard ATX.
A fanless server won't be pretty common as most server equipment is built without caring about noise. You might have better luck building a system in a rack mount atx case
Do you really want it to be rackmount? You're probably going to find a fanless JBOD, but probably not the whole server because server rooms aren't fanless in most cases
@@Felix-ve9hs I want to run various applications mostly as part of a homelab. I don't expect high CPU usage (since I am a single user) but I need tons of ram. Today I have multiple passively cooled NUCs for this use case. I look for a better solution for my homelab.
I'd rather have the sa3200d filled with 4TB WD RED SA500 drives. An excellent bang for buck iSCSI backing solution which you can throw a *lot* at. Has redundant controllers and power supplies in 2U.
Hoping to see more ZFS based products from QNAP, I don't trust their butterfs. This box is still interesting for HA for those of us who do software RAID to mirror on the client.
For a lot of these smaller disk-based storage arrays, PCIe Gen3 is plenty. This is not exactly a massive all-flash array where the media can saturate 200Gbps links as an example. You are correct that AMD does not do a good job targeting the entry Xeon line. I have brought it up with AMD execs for years.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I'd argue that for a small system that doesn't have many drives, being able to put a drive or NIC with 2x the performance in isn't insignificant.
If running only 8X spinning drives under ZFS per node, you are not saturate even a single 10 GbE network connection anyway...; it is not like this unit is intended for 100 Gb networks...
That video roll inside the system... nice!! Having ZFS is a big win, IMHO. It only lacks HA, an important feature to make this system a TrueNAS competitor. If they can make the entire disk array available to each node at a time they could make this a highly available solution.
On a side note. I always wondered which filesystem high end storage solutions use. Like EMC VMAX, or Hitachi VSP 5000, and so. They most likely use a propietary solution, but I wonder if they are based on ZFS.
Having this unit as not be Active/Active HA capable for all drives, is a really big shortcoming from QNAP. You should be able to choose if they operate as HA nodes, or separate nodes, for storage. Not just two separate nodes, as 8x disk bays limits your zpool configuration options. I wouldn't buy this myself though, as FreeNAS on second hand kit is far cheaper and more flexible.
Exactly, by the time you put disks in there, you are almost at the street price of professional solutions like a NetApp.
Some really class B Roll in this one bruh.
2:35 starts to pronunce next gen intel nameing scheme
LOL that name is completely ridiculous! Intel really did outdid themselves this time.
Looks like a “consumer” version of a HPE Nimble storage server, I like it!
Dang, I honestly really like this system and the entire layout. There's just so much room to play around with.
Qnap seem to be the kings of making solutions in search of a problem, great idea but also lacking an internal link between the nodes really is a shame
Man this thing seems really cool. Gluster support would be something super cool to see in the future
Did you use one of these super long probe lenses for these shots inside the server? Looking super immersive!
Yes. This was done on the EOS R and the probe. That was the idea. The probe actually looks a bit better when paired with the C70's but we shot this B-roll before the C70's arrived. Stay tuned for more on that.
You make vendor lock-in sound so great when you talk about a "QNAP ecosystem" ;-) The form factor seems nice for a small/medium size office but the dual NAS and 6 core Xeons seems like a little more than one needs and expandability you'll never take advantage. Although it does seems like something one would put in a remote office away from easy technical support.
So QNAP does not actually vendor lock devices. You can use many non-QNAP branded devices as well. What they do have is some specific hardware solutions for their NAS units that solve specific needs. They also have sales folks and partners that are trying to sell more from a broader portfolio which is a fairly basic business strategy. Maybe I should have been clearer on that but the video was getting long as it is.
Anyone remember the Dell Poweredge C6100? I almost bought one of those, but decided on the 2100 instead(single NAS instead of 4), The 6100 wasnt strictly a NAS, it was more of a compute node, but with very high density(for the time) drive bays. Even today, 12xLFF or 24xSFF drive bays on a 2u system is pretty good.
If i could finde one of them for $150 with everything needed but drives, processors, and RAM i'd probably pick one up, as 48 cores would still be cool to mess with, but the idle power draw would be insaile, my 2100 with only two Xeon L5640 idles at 250w with drives active. I cant imagine how much power a 4 node, 8 processor X5650 C6100 would draw, my guess is that it would need two 1100w PSUs
Swing and a miss in my book, without a shared drive pool there is no real redundancy except for the psu's. It's basically two stand alone nas'es put into a metal box. It's a lot of complicated hot plug fancyness without any real benefit over just having two separate nas boxes - apart from the redundant power supplys.
Running GlusterFS on this unit for HA and/or just high performance (stripped over both nodes, or in Gluster lingo, a distributed stripped volume) would just ABSOLUTELY kick ass!!!
The almost $7000 US (at the time of writing) would be the biggest limitation though.
But I will say this -- the QNAP management software makes a lot of the sysadmin tasks SUPER duper easy and it's so well integrated with the hardware that they've chosen.
My two wishlists:
1) PCIe 3.0/4.0 x16 slots. Not many of their systems have that capability.
2) Support for 100 GbE (or 100 Gbps Infiniband). This would also be a HUGE benefit for my own personal use case as well. The lack of support for this type of hardware is the other biggest limiting factor that prevents me from deploying a system like this, unfortunately. :(
The enterprise offering is the ES1686dc which looks like that but shares the storage among both controllers and is fully redundant. I've been using their enterprise hardware for over 10 years and they are to me the most bang for the buck.
Wait, what?! No cheeky camera gear on display on the left side? Love the macro shots. Assume its shot on the Laowa 24mm f/14 2x Macro Probe lens?
Exactly right on the Laowa. Using the EOS R. Newer shots with it use the C70 as well which is a bit better. When we did the B-roll the C70's had not shipped.
For some reason, TH-cam automated captions system thinks your video is in Korean :/
I finally got my shirt!
Reminds me of the Supermicro Fat Twin from a few years ago (they might still have it). Was two nodes in 3U with an internal backplane for fast networking between the two nodes. NexGen used it as a NAS head that did active-active replication between the two halves.
Can you do speed benchmarks with different types of drives on different platforms?
God if that had dual active connection to the whole black plane it would be killer. It would need two internal InfiniBand links or some such for concurrency, but wowzers that would be nice.
Have looked at that model the other day since I manage several QNAP units both in production and at home, and was curious about their product range nowadays. The hardware looks nice and the price is OKish. But it lacks HA, so in practice is little more than two QNAP NAS units in a smaller space. Unfortunately, being QNAP, I suspect will also mean a steady diet of bloated, buggy, awfully designed features and apps, so I would give them the pass on HA solutions. TrueNAS HA has a much better feel good ratio, in my opinion.
This is all cute and all. But where are the 3/4U chassis for building commodity truenas / w/e units. I'm tired of tossing units that blow some part and are past EOL on official and aftermarket support. Or hoarding a basement full of Dell/HPE/IBM units for parts to keep one unit going in confidence.
I see we've got a new mini-camera in the kit. :-)
Actually, those macro shots were taken with a full Canon EOS R camera (that has now been replaced by a Canon C70)
Excellent reviews. Thank you so much. Can you say snap/synology is finally enterprise ready and be trusted mission critical?
lol patrick is on a "no screws" tear lately 5:55
The industry started moving this way years ago. I am fully pushing it now.
Can you install your own OS on this thing? In that case one could simply role out CEPH or Gluster on these
I'm a bit concerned that STH is going the way of toms hardware, where the reviews are more about what something 'is' instead of giving us the skinny and performance details. This video has almost no real content in it.
Looks really nice. But for homeuse I think the price is a bit high ;-)
I have always build my own NAS solutions, as the home NAS units always let me down somehow. Mostly the lack of control I guess.
Now I run debian with ZFS, all managed from the console. And yes I like working on the command line and nothing happens behind the scenes without me knowing about it.
I really wish they released it in desktop factor as well... of course by making it quieter a lot ;) Though in a desktop range, it'd be better if they released it with E2246G for the iGPU added functionalities. Not to mention they really need to like into adding clustering functionality besides ZFS. And hopefully they could reduce the pricing of the whole hero range to more palatable regions...
Personally, I do not like the Qnap software.
That said this does not seem practical to me. I would rather have something like the Synology active-active dual controller system. Then segregate the services by container or virtual dsm. Though ZFS is cool, I just do not see use this solution. Even for a backup target, you want both copies in different locations so you need 2 units.
Nice macro shots!
Sorry for offtopic. Can anyone recommend a fanless server build? Maybe something based on ARM or low power ryzen? I found Akasa Galileo TU1 which would be a candidate but i'm looking for something in 2-3U area and standard ATX.
A fanless server won't be pretty common as most server equipment is built without caring about noise. You might have better luck building a system in a rack mount atx case
Do you really want it to be rackmount? You're probably going to find a fanless JBOD, but probably not the whole server because server rooms aren't fanless in most cases
Question: Why do you want your Server to be fansless and what are you going to run on your Server?
@@Felix-ve9hs I want to run various applications mostly as part of a homelab. I don't expect high CPU usage (since I am a single user) but I need tons of ram. Today I have multiple passively cooled NUCs for this use case. I look for a better solution for my homelab.
@@catrage if you need tons of ram that ram also needs cooling, you could look at noctua fans with low noise adapters, almost silent
They needed to compete with TrueNAS HA but they really can’t in price or openness.
we are looking at a 14k-to 25k NAS, plus the harddrives
Yeah but in 5 years it will be worth 1/10th that price in something like eBay so then it might be worth it
I think the TrueNAS dual-head systems are a much better deal for the money.
I'd rather have the sa3200d filled with 4TB WD RED SA500 drives. An excellent bang for buck iSCSI backing solution which you can throw a *lot* at. Has redundant controllers and power supplies in 2U.
Stay away from RED Drives if you use ZFS.. they are SMR Drives... On ServeTheHome you can find why.
@@marcomanfredini4483 The WD RED SA500 is a SSD?!
@@databeestjeyes, my mistake but when i see WD and RED in the same phrase i react like a bull 😁😁😁
@@marcomanfredini4483 I know what you mean, I cringe everytime I see a Seagate barracuda 1TB mentioned. Those thing were awful at a almost 50% rate.
Hoping to see more ZFS based products from QNAP, I don't trust their butterfs.
This box is still interesting for HA for those of us who do software RAID to mirror on the client.
for Nimbus Data cinemas 50 terabytes is better
PCIe 3.0 is a bit sad, but apparently AMD has zero interest in small server CPUs like this.
For a lot of these smaller disk-based storage arrays, PCIe Gen3 is plenty. This is not exactly a massive all-flash array where the media can saturate 200Gbps links as an example. You are correct that AMD does not do a good job targeting the entry Xeon line. I have brought it up with AMD execs for years.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I'd argue that for a small system that doesn't have many drives, being able to put a drive or NIC with 2x the performance in isn't insignificant.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo They will take notice when Nvidia start listening to customers and kick Intel and AMD to the curb.
If running only 8X spinning drives under ZFS per node, you are not saturate even a single 10 GbE network connection anyway...; it is not like this unit is intended for 100 Gb networks...
@@mdd1963 there's the U.2 and M.2 capabilities
Can I just marry Patrick? Like please?
Truenas comes with high availability. Qnap has not done anything great.